A call for a national collaborative predator coexistence programme

1. Negative interactions between large terrestrial predators and livestock are a global phenomenon. The resultant conflicts can threaten the livelihoods and cultural traditions of those living closest to predator populations and jeopardize the conservation of predator species. These challenges are pronounced in the United States, where predator conservation is at a defining moment. 2. Focusing on the United States, we advocate for policy initiatives at the na - tional

living in shared landscapes where human interactions with predators are governed by effective institutions that ensure long-term predator population persistence, social legitimacy, and tolerable levels of risk'. Given the central role of institutions in this definition, we propose and outline below a new policy initiative to promote coexistence with predators in the United States, where predator conservation is at a defining moment .

Following a long history of extermination efforts in the United
States, there are increasing signs that the public is willing to coexist with large terrestrial predators, such as wolves, bears and felids (Bergstrom, 2017;Bruskotter et al., 2017). For instance, protective policies enacted over the last several decades have enabled some predator populations to stabilize or recover (Gompper et al., 2015; Figure 1). Public attitudes towards some predator species are becoming more favourable (George et al., 2016). The scientific community is increasingly focusing on the myriad socioeconomic and ecological benefits that predators provide to human societies, rather than only their risks to human safety or depredations of livestock (Expósito-Granados et al., 2019). People with different interests and priorities are collaborating to manage predators using non-lethal techniques instead of resorting to lethal removal (Young et al., 2019).
Although progress is being made, coexisting with predators faces significant hurdles in the United States. A key challenge is the management of predators on federal public lands managed for multiple uses, including livestock grazing. These lands are vast in the  (Bruskotter et al., 2011;Carter et al., 2019;Lute & Carter, 2020;Nie, 2003).
There are encouraging signs that in some places grazing and conservation stakeholders are voluntarily collaborating to use nonlethal methods for resolving conflicts over predators (Boronyak et al., 2020;Wilson et al., 2017;Young et al., 2019). Such initiatives promote diverse practices including reducing attractants by disposing of livestock carcasses; increasing human presence using range riders to monitor predator movements; erecting barriers to separate livestock from predators in risky places and times; using visual, chemical and auditory deterrents such as strobe lights and loud speakers; working with guard animals such as dogs that are trained to protect herds from predators; and altering grazing practices such as rekindling herd instincts and rotational grazing. Evidence indicates that place-based collaborations can be effective in reducing impacts from predators, increasing human tolerance to these animals and reducing human-caused mortality of predators (Morehouse et al., 2020;Stone et al., 2017). These positive outcomes are attributed not only to the tools, but perhaps more importantly to robust, collaborative processes that create respectful forums and norms for addressing competing values (Wilson et al., 2017).
The benefits of these collaborations, however, are not being realized for the vast majority of communities and predator populations. Non-lethal strategies are used only by a small minority of livestock producers (Macon, 2020) and are applied to small portions F I G U R E 1 As grizzly bear Ursus arctos populations recover and expand their ranges in the continental US, livestock depredations and subsequent lethal removals of grizzlies on federal public lands may increase. A national coexistence programme will incentivize collaborations between grazing and conservation stakeholders to use non-lethal methods for resolving conflicts over grizzlies and other predators of predators' current and potential ranges. Although bright spots of local-level governance, these collaborations are underutilized and do not match the large spatial extents that both predators and livestock roam. Yet, implementing and sustaining coexistence strategies across large regions must overcome substantial monetary and opportunity costs, deficits in training and materials, and social norms that might be resistant to their use.

| ENAB LING COE XIS TEN CE AT REG IONAL SC ALE S
We argue that a national coexistence programme in the United States is needed to overcome these barriers. The federal programme should fund and support place-based (e.g. watershed level) coexistence strategies on federal public lands while facilitating adoption of effective strategies across large regions that better match the spatial extent of the interface between predators and livestock. The programme should be designed to foster the creation and growth of a network of communities that take it upon themselves to share landscapes sustainably with predators (Schneider et al., 2003). Insights, lessons and resources from those individual communities can link across the network to facilitate adaptive learning and enable effective collaborative coexistence at regional scales . In addition to local collaboration, the programme should incentivize the use of best available practices, science and innovations for reducing predator-grazing conflict (van Eeden, Eklund, et al., 2018).  (Butler & Schultz, 2019). Authorized as an $80 million programme and funded through an annual appropriation to the Forest Service, the CFLR Programme encourages collaborative forest restoration at the landscape scale through a competitive process that rewards place-based collaborations with multi-year funding commitments (Cromley, 2005;Little, 2011;Schultz et al., 2019).

| THE FACE TS OF A NE W COE XIS TEN CE PROG R AMME
We envision a national coexistence programme like the CFLR Programme, whereby collaborative groups representing diverse interests operating within federally managed landscapes with ongoing predator conflicts compete for funding (provided by federal appropriations) based on their ability to reduce conflict and meet and sustain coexistence criteria, as evaluated by an advisory com- Funding should be long term to encourage sustained participation from federal land managers, local communities and stakeholders and to allow enough time for coexistence outcomes to emerge and succeed (Butler & Schultz, 2019).
Developing a core set of monitoring and evaluation criteria will be challenging but crucial to programme success. These criteria should build from common ground between stakeholder groups (Lecuyer et al., 2018) and include a range of sociopolitical and ecological dimensions and may include indicators related to predator behaviours, demographics and population status; livestock numbers, health and productivity; equity, efficiency and accountability in decision-making and conflict resolution; and attitudes, perceptions, values and behaviours towards predators (Ceauşu et al., 2019). To improve legitimacy, these coexistence indicators should be monitored by teams representing diverse interests, including members of the local collaborative group, natural resource management agencies, scientists from diverse disciplines, conservation advocates and livestock producers (Leibenath, 2008;Serenari & Taub, 2019). This would ensure that success is being defined and evaluated with consideration of all stakeholder's interests. Regular and timely reporting of monitoring results can foster adaptive management, enabling communities to adjust to emerging conflicts and maximize benefits of the programme (Aronsson & Persson, 2017).
A national, collaborative coexistence programme should emphasize capacity building at a community level. An example of a capacity building initiative is to provide leadership-building opportunities for potential coexistence leaders from diverse interest groups in landscapes shared with large predators, particularly within rural communities impacted by conflicts over predators (Gutiérrez et al., 2011;Schultz et al., 2018;Sjölander-Lindqvist et al., 2015). The programme could also facilitate partnerships between local communities and researchers from conservation organizations or universities to test coexistence strategies and implement multi-party monitoring plans.
Incentivizing collaboration can ensure broad consensus on effective coexistence strategies, while accounting for local contexts, and therefore make it easier for communities to adopt proven coexistence tools rather than have them mandated from the top-down (Linnell, 2015;Redpath et al., 2017;Schusler et al., 2003). Adopting proven coexistence tools through a network of collaboratives can also facilitate an economy of scale, helping reduce the financial, material and information burdens for those individual ranchers considering the use of coexistence strategies (Macon, 2020). Moreover, rather than relying on financial compensation for depredated livestock, incentivizing community collaboration for coexistence acknowledges the important role of ranchers as stewards of these landscapes (Lien et al., 2017).

| A PIECE OF A B I G G ER PUZ ZLE
The proposed collaborative coexistence programme will not resolve all of the challenges associated with managing predators on increasingly crowded landscapes. For example, this programme focuses on public lands in the United States; however, many impacts from predators and lethal control responses occur on private lands, which are numerous (Wilson et al., 2005). As the proposed collaborative coexistence programme is refined over time, the lessons learned can be integrated into the management of non-federal lands. As an example, the US Fish and Wildlife Service has a programme called Partners for Fish and Wildlife, which helps landowners restore wildlife habitat on their land to benefit federal trust species, including migratory birds, endangered, threatened and at-risk species. Our proposed collaborative coexistence programme also does not directly address other key threats to predators, such as human population growth in predator habitats and urbanization and other drivers of habitat loss and fragmentation (Parsons et al., 2019). Rather, our proposed programme should be viewed as one of a suite of evolving policy tools for predator population and habitat conservation that account for changing social, political and ecological conditions.
Although focused on the United States, with its unique social and political landscapes, certain elements of the programme could likely be adopted elsewhere. For example, the set of monitoring and evaluation criteria, which help determine whether progress is being made towards collaborative coexistence, could largely be replicated to other regions around the world where community engagement is essential to sustaining and coexisting with predator populations. However, because of fundamentally different governance structures in other places (Baylis et al., 2008), some aspects of the programme, such as the funding mechanisms and interconnections to existing wildlife management policies would not transfer easily or at all. If this programme were to take shape in the United States, it will be highly useful to coordinate with international conservation organizations and national wildlife management agencies in other countries to determine how well this programme would fit elsewhere and benefit from their experiences as well.

| A RE TURN ON INVE S TMENT
A national coexistence programme that supports a network of coexistence collaboratives and reduces high-cost conflicts on federal public lands furthers the public interest and supports the conservation and management goals on those lands. In addition, the continued recovery of large predators generates multitudinous benefits.
By consuming prey animals, predators can mitigate zoonotic disease transmission, decrease vehicle collisions with herbivores, reduce crop losses and increase carbon sequestration in certain ecosystems (Gregr et al., 2020;O'Bryan et al., 2018). Insomuch as predators are attributed with aesthetic, cultural, economic and educational values, their loss also diminishes humans' quality of life Gilbert et al., 2021). However, rural communities living closer to predators disproportionately incur the costs of those animals. This proposed coexistence programme would help rectify this inequity by distributing financial incentives to communities sharing landscapes with predators now and in the future . Because the programme would focus on strengthening collaborative processes, local communities will also be better capable of sustainably living with predators regardless of the changing winds of national politics (Hartel et al., 2019). tional, collaborative coexistence programme is increasingly important as the overlap between public rangelands and predator ranges grows in the future. Furthermore, boosted by science-based collaborative processes, the programme has the potential to mature into a structured force that could reshape how we live with predators across the United States.

ACK N OWLED G EM ENTS
We are grateful to Dr. Courtney Schultz and Dr. John Linnell for their helpful feedback on earlier versions of this manuscript. We also thank the two anonymous reviewers for their thoughtful feedback and suggestions. Funding was provided by the National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship Program (3067001) to T. Easter.

CO N FLI C T O F I NTE R E S T
The authors do not have any conflicts of interest to declare.

AUTH O R S ' CO NTR I B UTI O N S
The idea for this manuscript was originally developed by N.H.C. and P.N.; N.H.C. led the writing of the manuscript; N.H.C., P.N. and T.E. significantly contributed to drafting and revising the manuscript and gave final approval for its publication.

DATA AVA I L A B I L I T Y S TAT E M E N T
There are no data associated with this article.